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I read this on a Weight Watchers message board last night - listing of different foods/ who eats what (vegan vs. ovo/lacto vegetarians vs. pescatarians).

Is honey REALLY an animal product? That seems to be stretching it to me. I'm very supportive of a vegetarians choices, but honey????

There are degrees of vegetarianism as there are degrees of anything. You can be a strict Catholic or a Catholic by your own interpretation... Vegetarianism is also about avoid supporting human manipulation of animal behavior, especially if that behavior has negative impact. I.e., even if bees didn't process honey via enzymes, etc., honey is collected in a way that will give strict vegetarians pause.

See, in the end, beekeeping is human manipulation of nature - of the behavior and lives of the honeybee, which is, of course, an animal.- honeybees aren't native to North America (for the North American audience).- we put them in a box that is a compromise between what they prefer and what we prefer. - loads of bees are killed in the day to day activities of a beekeeper.- lots of chemicals are used by many beekeepers.- we do things to keep our bees from swarming like squish the queen every year.- beekeepers have much blame in the spread of the varroa mite and other diseases/issues.- we take their excess honey! ;)- etc. etc. etc.

So... I have respect for the idealists of the world. I also respect beekeepers (being one of them an all). To each his/her own. There is merit in both veiw points IMHO. Granted, I think there is more weight in the argument to avoid milk, meat, and other products where the animals are put through a great deal more suffering.

In the end, we make compromises and choices about what we feel is ethical. There is no complete black and white. Where I fall in the grey area is decided by me. I try to do the best by my bees (hence I am not a big fan of the "kill all bees and repackage every year" crowd), but I know I am unnaturally manipulating a "lesser" creature.

Ok... that's more "deep" than I wanted to go, but you get the idea. Stepping back for a second, one can see how strict vegans (and others I am sure) will avoid honey, just like some avoid milk products, wool, leather, etc.

If what you posted was held up for everything, then they would eat nothing. Even organic gardening causes the death of insects, is unnatural, is subject to man's manipulations. After all you have to clear a place for planting. This takes away the natural growth of things, destroys natural habitats for birds, mammals, insects, reptiles.

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:rainbowflower: Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak. :rainbowflower:

Manipulating NatureProfiting from honey requires the manipulation and exploitation of the insectsâ€™ desire to live and protect their hive. Like other factory-farmed animals, honeybees are victims of unnatural living conditions, genetic manipulation, and stressful transportation.

The familiar white box that serves as a beehive has been around since the mid-1850s and was created so that beekeepers could move the hives from place to place. The New York Times reported that bees have been â€œmoved from shapes that accommodated their own geometry to flat-topped tenements, sentenced to life in file cabinets.â€(19)

Since â€œswarmingâ€ (the division of the hive upon the birth of a new queen) can cause a decline in honey production, beekeepers do what they can to prevent it, including clipping the wings of a new queen, killing and replacing an older queen after just one or two years, or confining a queen who is trying to begin a swarm.(20, 21) There are also commercial â€œqueen rearersâ€ who raise and mail about a million queen bees a year all over North America. Many of the animals die in transit.(22) Queens are artificially inseminated using drones, who are killed in the process.(23) Commercial beekeepers also â€œtrickâ€ queens into laying more eggs by adding wax cells to the hive that are larger than those that worker bees would normally build.(24)

Some farmers kill all the bees in the fall because itâ€™s easier than winterizing the hives. One beekeeper admits that one of his friends â€œuses canisters of cyanide gas to exterminate 6,000 colonies of bees at the conclusion of the production season. It is the most economical way to run his operation.â€(25) Each hive that is left to hibernate through the winter needs at least 50 pounds of honey to survive, and according to one entomologist, many bees succumb to improper care, starvation, weakness, and other problems during the winter.(26)

Honeybee populations have declined by as much as 50 percent since the 1980s, partly because of parasitic mites.(27) BeeCulture magazine reports that beekeepers are notorious for contributing to the spread of disease: â€œBeekeepers move infected combs from diseased colonies to healthy colonies, fail to recognize or treat disease, purchase old infected equipment, keep colonies too close together, [and] leave dead colonies in apiaries.â€(28) Artificial diets, provided because farmers take the honey that bees would normally eat, leave bees susceptible to sickness and attack from other insects.(29) When diseases are detected, beekeepers are advised to â€œdestroy the colony and burn the equipment,â€ which can mean burning or gassing the bees to death.(30)

Since healthy honeybees are becoming harder and harder to find, farmers have resorted to trucking hives across the country. When asked to examine 2,000 beehives rented by a New Jersey cranberry farmer, retired apiary inspectors found â€œabout 500 colonies with equipment in such bad shape that [it] would not even qualify as junk â€¦ mice nests, old feeders full of comb, rotten hive with bees coming out from all over.â€ The hives were also made of wood that was labeled as having been treated with arsenic and was, therefore, unsuitable for beehives.(31)

Bears are also victims of the honey industry. The government of Maryland compensates beekeepers for electric fences around hives, and Virginia beekeepers have asked their legislature to allow them to kill bears.(32)

What You Can DoAvoid honey, beeswax, propolis, royal jelly, and other products that come from bees. Vegan lip balms and candles are readily available. Visit CaringConsumer.com for a list of companies that donâ€™t use animal products. Rice syrup, molasses, sorghum, barley malt, maple syrup, and dried fruit or fruit concentrates can be used to replace honey in recipes. Call 1-888-VEG-FOOD or visit GoVeg.com to order a free vegetarian starter kit that contains information about compassionate eating choices.

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"Lurch my good man,â€¦what did you mean when you said just now that 'You've got better things to do than run my petty little errands'â€¦â€¦.?"

My mom is a vegitarian, and fairly strict about what she eats. But I'm always fighting with her about the "logic" she gives me. She calls trees "living creatures", and feels that the logging industry is murdering trees. She doesn't even like cutting down a tree with out apoligizing to it first. Yet she snatches vegetables out of the ground and chops them into little pieces without a flinch. :) I have said to her, "if every living thing is equally valueble, from a carrot to a human, then how can she be willing to murder carrots?". We humans manipulate every aspect of our world. If you wanna EAT, and do it affordably and efficiently, then manipulation is needed. And being a strict vegitarian doesn't get you any closer to "eating healthy". Since the veggies you buy in the store still have pesticides, herbicides, wax and dye placed on them. Even grocery store "free-range" eggs are from chickens raised in cramped (elbow to elbow/dirty floor) warehouses. Unless you grow it yourself or raise it yourself, you have NO idea what you are eating. Or what's in it/on it.

Same with what you wear. Are you every really sure that the clothes you wear are machine made? Or is there a possibility it was made by some 7 year old china girl that only makes $1 a day and is starving?

While I don't agree with PETA nor all the vegans out there who applogizes to various plants before cutting them down or eating them, I am mostly a vegetarian...a latco-oval vegetarian...and I prefer being a vegetarian.

The reason I don't like to eat meat is that .in all honesty, eating meat is recycled nutrients for the human body...Eating plants is a much more direct route for my body to get those same available nutrients and giving my body a choice as to which gets used and which gets discarded. I figure it this way, nature is smarter than I am about which nutrient is best for it's own use.

Having said that, I am also aware where nature has gone amuck, and sometimes intervention is necessary to restore to better conditions. [After all, we have a "health industry" for heavens sake .] And I am not adverse to manipulating the system a bit to make things better for humans, ie beekeeping, farming, forrestation projects, both in the enviorment and for my survival.

And having said that, I am gravely aware where we have gone wrong in our attempts to manipulate to our benefit, where ozone depletions has occured, and the ruination/pollution of rivers and deforrestation projects have been done in error and in greed.

So, having said all that, I wil say this...Meat eaters have not cause all the problems that vegans claims, but neither has PETA been totally wrong either...PETA and lacto-oval vegetarians are not different ends of the eating spectrum. Each side has some very good and valid arguements to problems that affict and affect the human race. And what's the harm if we eat a bit cleaner foods, and manipulate the enviorment for our benefit as long as it doesnt damage the enviorment?

>"Commercial beekeepers also â€œtrickâ€ queens into laying more eggs by adding wax cells to the hive that are larger than those that worker bees would normally build."

As usual this is a half truth. They DO put in wax cells that are larger than those that worker bees would normally build. BUT it does NOT induce the queen to lay any more eggs. Since it takes MORE energy to maintain a larger brood nest, I'd guess she might even lay LESS eggs. :)

They also imply that all of us use AI (II) queens. I don't know about the rest of you, but I've never had anything but open mated queens.